I'm just careful not to twist them or sharply bend them. If I pack them I usually just very-loosely wad them up and put them in a not-too-full part of a bag. That's the extent of my "care".
[EDIT] However! This does not mean Apple shouldn't make their cables better so they survive whatever people are doing to them to wreck them, since it's evidently very common.
I had a Belkin lightning nylon charge cable I used for years and it worked great, then my gf borrowed it for 2 days and "gorilla'd" the end. Since she had a habit of chewing through the regular cables in only a few months, I was curious to watch and see what she does different.
It was two things:
1. She uses the phone while charging frequently and has the cable kept taut, this strains the connector.
But more importantly
2. She yanks the phone off the charger by grabbing the cord and pulling the phone at an angle, this can destroy a worn cable in a matter of days.
This is the difficult part when the whole cable is a single solid color and the plug fits either direction. I have a Lightning cable in my car that only gets used hanging straight down from my dash-mounted iPhone, and I've noticed the device-end strain relief finally giving out from this after a few years.
In my experience, litz wire is exceptionally flexible and suitable for getting shoved in a pocket frequently. Each wire can be quite thick due to the flexibility.